CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 16:1. Nearly all commentators agree in reading this verse, “To man belong the preparations of the heart, but the answer of the tongue is from, the Lord.” Preparations, lit. “arrangements,” “orderly disposings,” as those of an army in array, or as the loaves of the shewbread set in order.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 16:1
THE HEART AND THE TONGUE
I The human heart needs preparation.
1. It needs to be prepared for the reception of moral truth. When the earth was “without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” it was not in a condition to receive seed into its bosom. There was a need of preparation before it was fit to receive seed which would produce “herb after its kind.” Light must play upon its surface, heat and moisture must penetrate the soil. And man’s heart, in his present fallen condition, is like the earth before the “Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” It needs some preparation before it can receive the truth of God so as to be benefited by it—before it is that “good ground” into which, when the “good seed” falls, it “brings forth fruit, some an hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold” (Matthew 13:3-8). As the plough must break the clods before the seed can be sown with any hope of harvest, so the “fallow-ground” of the heart must be broken up—must undergo some preparation before it can be a profitable receiver of moral truth (Hosea 10:12). Our Lord, in the parable of the sower, teaches most distinctly the truth that the good which is derived from hearing Divine truth depends upon the state of heart of him who hears.
2. It needs to be prepared to yield moral truth. All the preparation of the earth is to the end—not that it should be a receiver, but a giver. The seed is sown not that it should remain in the soil, but that the earth should “bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater” (Isaiah 55:10). So it is with the human soul. It takes in the thoughts of God, that it may translate them into holy words and deeds. The “preparation of the heart” is but a means to “the answer of the tongue.” Out of the “good treasure of the heart” good things are expected to issue (Matthew 12:35). But unless there is preparation to receive there can be no giving out of anything that is worth the giving. The quality of the water that comes to the lip of the drinker depends upon the quality of the spring that fills the well. As we have often before remarked, the “tree” must be first “good,” and then the “fruit will be good” (Matthew 12:33). He whose heart is prepared by Divine influence to receive the Divine Word will not be at a loss for such an “answer of the tongue” as will bring glory to God, honour to himself, and blessings to others.
II. The preparation of the heart, and, therefore, the answer of the tongue, depends upon God. In nature laws are constantly at work to bring to pass certain facts and results, and man works with these laws, and in obedience to them. But behind the laws there must be a law-giver—behind the working there must be a worker—and this worker and law-giver is God. The preparation of the earth is the work of man; yet both the preparation of the earth and the answer of the earth to that preparation is from God. There would be no harvest if the husbandman did not toil; but there would be no harvest if behind him and his toil there was not the Life-Giver. God is the spring of all activities, not only in the sower of the seed, but in the seed which is sown and in the earth in which it germinates. So in the preparation of the heart, and the right use of the tongue. Man’s freedom and responsibility in these matters are insisted upon in the oracles of God. He and he alone is to be blamed if his heart is not prepared to receive the words of God. He is commanded as we saw just now to “break up his fallow ground” (Jeremiah 4:3)—to prepare his spirit for the reception of Divine truth. Yet if a man’s heart is thus prepared, and if by preparation of heart his tongue is able to speak good words, he is not the sole producer of the result. Behind the springs of thinking—behind the means used by the man himself—God is working “both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” God claims to be the Author of all good, whether in the bud of thought or in the fruit of action. From Him “all good counsels and all just works do proceed.” This is the teaching of this verse as it stands in our English Bible, but many commentators translate the verse differently. (See Critical Notes.) The thought as thus translated is similar to that in Proverbs 16:9, upon which see Homiletics.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
The great doctrine of all Scripture is, that heart religion is true religion. In nothing is Christianity more distinguished from all other systems of religion than in the moral purity which it inculcates and which it provides the means of producing. Other religions multiply articles of faith and ritual observances, and pompous ceremonials: this alone fixes upon the internal character of the worshipper and the actual state of the heart before God. God first gives grace, and then owns and honours the grace which He gives. “The preparations of the heart are of the Lord;” “The prayer of the upright is His delight” (chap. Proverbs 15:8). This was discovered long before Solomon’s time. It was from the very first the primary design of the religion of the Bible. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (Hebrews 11:4).… It is God’s prerogative to prepare the heart for Himself, and he does this especially, by establishing the principles of grace and holiness in the mind, and then actuating the habits of grace which His own spirit has implanted. We need preparation—
1. For spiritual worship. The worship of God, as it necessarily includes all the devout affections, is the most spiritual act in which we are engaged. In prayer, in reading and hearing God’s word, and in approaching the sacramental table, we have especially to do with God, in the gracious relations in which He stands to us. And as these exercises raise us above the ordinary level of the world, and are foreign to our ordinary habits of thought and emotion as the creatures of dust and time, we need especial assistance to fix our attention, to purify our motives, and to realise the presence of the Master of assemblies. We need “grace whereby to serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Hebrews 12:28). This preparation of the heart is God’s gift, it is God’s promise, it is the Church’s hope, and it has been realised in the experience of God’s faithful people in the ordinances of His appointment.
2. For active service. Christians have much to do for God in the world, in the family, in the Church, in the disposal of their ordinary business, etc. In all these things wisdom is needed to direct, and wisdom should be sought from him.
3. For patient suffering. It is a great thing to have a heart prepared for suffering. One important requisite is, to anticipate its approach, that that day may not come upon us unawares, that trial may not entangle us in temptation, but may, like the overflowings of the Nile, leave the means of fertility behind. Another requisite is that we should expect to meet with God in affliction. When God announces a long succession of national judgments, He says, “And because I will do this, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel” (Amos 4:12). This text is usually applied to death and judgment, but it really relates to worldly disasters, and teaches that God would have us prepare to meet Him in the distressing changes of human life.
4. For enjoyment. If there is much to be suffered there is also much to be enjoyed. But a time of prosperity needs heart preparation, lest a time of ease be a time of danger. “It is the bright day brings out the adder, and that craves wary walking.” It was when Noah had escaped the deluge, and had gathered in his first vintage from the grapes he had planted, that he drank of the wine and was drunken. David, safe in the wilderness, was entangled in fatal snares when walking on the roof of his palace. (Note. Though heart preparation is from God, it is not given as a premium to sloth, but in proportion to the earnestness with which we seek the grace. The following passage from a letter of Colonel Gardiner tells how that man of God sought preparation from God for the Lord’s Supper. “I took a walk on the hills and mountains over against Ireland. And could I give you a description of what passed there, you would agree that I had much better reason to remember my God from the hills of Port P—than David from the Hermonites, the land of Jordan, and the hill Mizar. In short, I wrestled with the Angel of the Covenant some hours, and made supplication to Him with strong crying and tears until I had almost expired, but He strengthened me till I had power with God. You will be able to judge by what you have felt upon like occasions, after such a preparatory work, how blessed the Lord’s Supper was to me.”)—S. Thodey.
Man may lay out his plans, but God alone can give them effect in answer to the tongue of prayer (Proverbs 16:9; chap. Proverbs 19:21; 2 Corinthians 3:5).—Maurer.
Often what you dispose in the aptest order in your heart you cannot also express suitably with the tongue. What one aptly speaks is from God.—Mercer.
Men often determine in heart to say something, but God overrules their tongue so as to say something utterly different, as in Balaam’s case (Numbers 23).—Menochius.
God takes the stone out of the heart that it may feel (Ezekiel 36:26); draws it that it may follow; quickens it that it may live. He opens the heart that He may imprint His own law, and mould it into His own image (Acts 16:14; Jeremiah 31:33). He works, not merely by moral suasion or by the bare proposal of means of uncertain power, but by invisible Almighty agency. The work then begins with God. It is not that we first come, and then are taught; but first we learn, then we come (John 6:45).… Shall we then wait indolently till He works? Far from it. We must work, but in dependence upon Him. He works not without us, but with us, through us, in us, by us, and we work in Him (Philippians 2:13; Job 11:13). Ours is the duty, His is the strength; ours the agency, His the quickening grace. “The work, as it is a duty, is ours; but as a performance it is God’s” (Bishop Reynolds).—Bridges.
Undoubtedly we arrange and plan. That is a matter of consciousness. But these are but the tools of the designer. He uses our plannings to shape the last word to His mind.… The “arrangings of the heart” are, indeed, as much God’s as the final “decree,” because, in brief, everything is. He destines everything; but not in the same sense in which they are consciously man’s. They precede the end, and are present. They cannot determine the end, that is future. I cannot determine now what I will say the next moment. God can. I can and do arrange. But at any convenient point, at any interval, even the very least, God can swing me round. What I shall say is a part of His providence. I cannot ordain to say it in such a way as that it shall be said. In the smallest interval that follows God may tempt Pharaoh, and he may have new views as to letting the children of Israel go. God cannot tempt me to evil; but He can govern by the privation of good. And, therefore, “the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water. He turneth it whithersoever He will.” This, of course, implicates God, to our weak seeming, in the sins of the wicked. The next verse discharges Him from any such accountability. (See Miller’s rendering of Proverbs 16:2, in his comments.)—Miller.
Though a man have never so exactly marshalled his matter in hand, as it were, in battle array, as the Hebrew imports, though he have set down with himself both what and how to speak, yet he shall never be able to bring forth his conceptions without the help of God.… Digressions are not always unuseful. God’s spirit sometimes draws aside the doctrine to satisfy some soul which the preacher knows not. But though God may force it, yet man may not frame it.—Trapp.
This is a matter of experience to which the preacher, the public speaker, the author, and every man to whom his calling or circumstances present a weighty difficult theme, can attest. As the thoughts pursue one another in the mind, attempts are made and again abandoned; the state of the heart is somewhat like that of chaos before the creation. But when, finally, the right thought and the right utterance for it are found, that which is found appears to us, not as if self-discovered, but as a gift; we regard it with the feeling that a higher power has influenced our thoughts and imaginings; the confession by us “our sufficiency is of God” (2 Corinthians 3:5) in so far as we believe in a living God, is inevitable.—Delitzsch.
Man doth not carry himself one-half of the way, and then as one wearied is carried the rest by God. But it is God who supporteth him in the heart as well as in the tongue: it is He that supporteth man in the preparations of the heart, and well as in the subsequent proceedings of the man. He is a God of the valleys as well as of the hills; and it is He that worketh as well in the lowest degree of goodness as in the highest. His praise reacheth from the root of the heart to the tip of the tongue, and all man’s goodness is from His grace.—Jermin.